Burleson County Farmers and Ranchers Keep Eye On Wet Weather

BURLESON COUNTY, Texas Farmers and ranchers in the Brazos River Valley are keeping a close watch on the weather after the recent rain.

A lot of them are celebrating the rain but as News 3 discovered, it's also hurting the fall cotton crop.

It's a soggy stroll around Don Beavers' Burleson County Ranch on the outskirts of Snook.

He raises longhorns and Arabian horses.

"With the land here being relatively flat and high clay content it doesn't run off or get absorbed real fast. While we always welcome rain, too much at one time gets to be a bit of mud challenge," he said.

He's measured more than four and a half inches of rain in the last few weeks and more than half of an inch while we were there.

"We're about two inches behind normal out here you know and other areas they are catching up or pretty close to normal. But basically we'll take all we can get," he added.

While the rain is almost always a welcome site the timing is terrible for those who haven't harvested their cotton crop yet.

"Just this past rain we had 4.7 inches," said Jason Wendler, who farms in Burleson and Brazos Counties.

While he and most farmers have already harvested their cotton, those who have it still on the ground here will take a hit.

"Number one on the yield that it will be producing the seed quality coming out of the cotton as well as the quality of the lint will take a big hit," Wendler said.

"Now that I'm living it, it's even more, there's more of an understanding of those challenges that farmers throughout history have faced with weather," said Don Beavers.

Hoping for more rains, just spread out more consistently.

Farmer Jason Wendler tells us wet cotton still on the ground could now be worth anywhere from 20 to 50 percent less in value.

He added that it shouldn't be a total loss for farmers who waited to harvest their cotton crop.

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Clay Falls joined the KBTX news family in January 2010 and is excited to be covering the Bryan/College Station area. Prior to joining the Brazos Valley news leader, Clay was a reporter for more than two years with CBS 19 in Tyler-Longview, Texas.